Zero Waste to Landfill

Environmental Stewardship Case Study:

Zero Waste to Landfill

As part of our commitment to be First Choice for customers we are always looking for ways to improve Our Beer Print, reduce the environmental impact of our products and improve the efficiency of our operations. One of the ways we can do that is by reducing the waste we generate and how we dispose of it. As Bill Coors once said ‘waste is just a resource out of place’.

In 2013 we established an operational 2020 Sustainability Strategy where we committed to an ambitious target to send zero waste to landfill across our operations by 2020.

We currently dispose of 15.8% of our waste to landfill, the amount varies by brewery and in many we are already well on the way to the target of zero. We have three breweries in the UK which have been landfill-free since 2012. In the US, 6 of MillerCoors’ 8 major breweries are also landfill-free. Our continuous landfill avoidance initiatives save Molson Coors in excess of $500,000 annually.

To reach our target in the rest of our breweries we first need to understand if the waste stream can be eliminated. Second, we need to determine how we can maximize its usefulness though re-use or recycling. Over 2014 we have spent time to do a detailed gap analysis which has shown many quick wins as well as longer term where we need innovative thinking to find solutions. Our resource efficiency agenda is also important beyond our landfill reduction target. The malting and brewing process creates “co-products” such as malt residual pellets, spent grains, waste yeast and other liquid slurries. These co-products have nutritional value, predominantly due to their high protein content. We are able to sell the co-products onto other manufacturers who use them to make new products, such animal feed. Molson Coors’ revenue from co-products successfully generated incremental revenue of $2.42M in 2014 versus 2013. The global project (Midas) continues to improve the sales revenue or cost incurrence by almost 10% year over year. Not only are we reducing our environmental impact but we are reusing materials that directly or indirectly enrich other products.